House Speaker Mike Johnson has made it clear that he thinks it right for Israel to retain all of Judea and Samaria: “Republican recognition grants Israel historic chance to cement West Bank sovereignty – editorial,” Jerusalem Post, August 5, 2025:
Yet enthusiasm in Washington carries costs in Jerusalem. When support for settlements becomes a partisan talking point, Democrats recoil, and bipartisan backing erodes. Israel risks exchanging a half-century of near-unanimous congressional support for a narrower – but louder – constituency….
The increasingly shrill anti-Israel voices in the Democratic Party will never support Israel’s retention of Judea and Samaria. They are willing to ignore 3,500 years of the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, and the Mandate for Palestine’s provisions, which assigned all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to the future Jewish National Home, which, in time, was to become the State of Israel. Nor do those Democrats pay any attention to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which recognized Israel’s right to “secure and defensible” borders, as defined by Israel itself. While the Arab states and, alas, many Western countries, including France, the U.K., and Canada, now assume that a 23rd Arab state, the “state of Palestine,” must be created in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, the Israelis are under no obligation to let themselves be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. They will retain all of Judea and Samaria, for three reasons: First, Jewish history over thousands of years was made not in Tel Aviv and Haifa, but in Judea and Samaria. Second, the League of Nations assigned all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be included in Mandatory Palestine, which would eventually become the State of Israel. Third, UNSC Resolution 242 gave Israel the right to retain any territory won in the Six-Day War that it needed in order to have “secure and defensible borders.”
Israel has to make clear, in every possible way, that it will retain, and by right, all of Judea and Samaria. It has to promote economic development in Judea and Samaria, and encourage American congressmen to visit those territories to see Israeli archeological sites that are vivid proof of the Jewish claim to those territories, as well as to see the thriving Israeli villages and cities that are not deserving of that scare-word “settlements,” and where 700,000 Jews now live. Those legislators can see for themselves how Israeli companies in those territories offer employment, too, at good wages, to Palestinian Arabs.
The Trump-Johnson alliance has provided unprecedented political cover, and now Jerusalem must convert it into facts on the ground that strengthen sovereignty and improve daily life for all residents.
That is, Israel must continue to expand existing Jewish cities and towns, and to build new ones, too, in Judea and Samaria, so that Jews who wish to can move there from the overcrowded and expensive coastal cities. The state needs to provide more housing for Jews wishing to move, for ideological or financial reasons, or both, to move to Judea and Samaria. Every additional Jewish resident living in those territories will make it more difficult for a future left-wing Israeli government to give up any part of the Jewish state’s sovereignty over that territory.
The very fact that major political figures in America are now embracing the place names Judea and Samaria, and even introducing legislation to make such usage by the government mandatory, is a great victory for Israel. Every time you hear or read the place names “Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank,” the Jewish claim to that territory is strengthened.
Try it. Whenever someone uses the term “West Bank” in conversation with you, be sure to refer only to “Judea and Samaria.” Ask print and radio and television journalists why they don’t use the place names in use for 3,500 years — Judea and Samaria — but instead choose to use “West Bank,” which was deliberately invented by the Jordanians in 1950 to replace those terms used since antiquity, precisely because they reminded people of the Jewish connection to that land.
And vote to keep both houses of Congress in the hands of those lawmakers who are willing to stand for these basic truths.
somehistory says
What is right, is right and those lands all belong to Israel.
There are already many voices in D.C. who want Israel to give in to the terrorists.
Giving ‘land for peace’ has never worked because muzzies don’t want peace. They “are for war” and they are for the *death* of Israel.
So why should Israel not claim what was rightfully given, thousands of years ago, to the Jews?
MJ Raichyk says
Can it work to say Samarian Judea ?? instead of Samaria and Judea ??
We want to replace the ONE-NESS of ‘West Bank’ so we should NOT use the TWO-NESS of Samaria and Judea…
The TWO-NESS says ”expansion” which automatically triggers exactly the wrong impression of GRABBING MORE…
And ”Samarian” automatically triggers the Christian New Testament Good Samaritan impression which is COMFORTING to want to say….
Much better than Judean Samaria which PUTS THE JEWISHness as key and again triggers the expansion image….
Any objections to Samarian Judea for talking points???
Maybe thinking of it as A symbol of reuniting of past division from the older Biblical episodes… which is kind of fitting…..
TTYL
gravenimage says
This seems to be silly hair-splitting, and will not appease Jihadists.
rick says
Exactly so. Israel should make a statement that considering the history of Palestinians towards Israel and Jews that Israel is opposed to any state called Palestine being allowed. In all of that history between the two parties, the Arab party has always chosen war, including and even before the advent of Israel in 1948.
I advise people to read about the horrible massacre of the Jews of Hebron in 1929. The Jews of that city, which is the second Holiest city in Judaism, were murdered inside their homes and then were “evacuated” by the Mandate Police, never to return until Liberation in 1967.
So that was a Mandate approved cleansing! That is 38 years until Jews were able to return only due to Israel winning another major war and people should understand that they would still be barred from Hebron today, just as Jews would be barred from Jerusalem’s Holy sites today as the world did nothing to reverse the forced cleansing of Jerusalem’s Jews.
Imagine “cleansing” Arabs from Mecca. What would the world do to Jews if they were responsible for that? Yet nothing was done to any Arab for what they did to Jews in Hebron in 1929 and Jerusalem in 1948.
Palestinians were overjoyed in being “given” the actual homes of those Jews who were walked out of Jerusalem at gunpoint in 1948 with whatever they could carry in their hands. The wrongs done to Jews in their own country are overwhelming. Yet when those crimes were done the world just yawned.
Creating a Palestine will begin a new set of crimes done to Jews ( the part of Jerusalem with the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount going to Palestinians is a red flashing warning of DON’T DO IT!!!). But this time Israel is strong enough to do something as they have done in Gaza after Oct. 7th.
If that is what France, Canada and Britain and others want, as it seems so, then those nations which refuse to read History, even current History, the effect will be a catastrophic ruin causing event, far worst than the current Gaza events.
The creation of Palestine, considering the history of who have been the leaders and heroes of the Palestinians will be the creation of a Terrorist State. The first I can think of in humane history.
Kosh's Shadow says
The increasingly shrill anti-Israel voices in the Democrat party are close to not supporting Jewish presence in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Or New York, the way they support Hamas supporters.
Wellington says
Again i will state with no hesitation or reservation that Israel made a huge mistake after the 1967 Six-Day War by its not annexing all of the so-called West Bank and the Gaza Strip (and replete with an expulsion of certain “populations” the way the Czechs did with its German population in the Sudetenland right after WWII). What, the way things are now was the better option? I think not.
Hell, being the non-Jewish Zionist that I am, I wish Israel had not returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt which Israel captured in the Six-Day War. Really, how much good did this do, i.e. a very cold peace with Egypt versus expanding Israel from the size of New Jersey or Maryland (the latter if one includes the West Bank and Gaza) to the size of Maine—some 8,000 to some 10,000 to some 33,000 square miles? Hey, sometimes size matters and in the geopolitical and military spheres my gut instinct says to me that Israel should have kept the Sinai. Besides, any Christians in the Sinai, such as those at Saint Catherine’s monastery, would have been much better off and secure under Israel than Egypt. Put another way, Christians under a Jewish state are infinitely better off than Christians under an Islamic state—a no brainer.
The great irony in all of this, a most bitter irony, is that Israel, regularly faulted for many decades for being too harsh, has actually been guilty of being too kind, and as most recently illustrated by Israel’s many efforts to bring relief to the so-called Palestinians with food supplies and military warnings aplenty all the while Hamas doesn’t give a damn about their fellow Muslims if only Israel is destroyed—and thus illustrating again that the more devout the Muslim the worst it is invariably for the rest of mankind, Israel and all dhimmis across the Earth included here—Hell, even many fellow Muslims. All for the glory of Allah and all that rot, eh?
My God, Islam is so sick and the more devoted the Muslim is to his warped creed the worst it is for mankind overall. Hamas serves as a representative of this verity. Clearly this is the case for al those who can still think clearly, which hopefully is not a declining number in the West but which I fear is the case, as an example look at what has happened to the Democratic Party of the USA, which party has lost its collective mind and is now far more in league with the decrepit Islamic sphere of mankind than the only decent polity in the Middle East. What a mess of a world the West is now in, almost all of its own making.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
Excellent post – every word – my compliments.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Wellington
The other mistake Israel made in 1967 was not demolishing the al Aqsa mosque & Dome of the Rock, and building a synagogue in their place. That’ opportunity may have been lost forever, unless one day, one of those Orthodox parties comes to power on its own and does it
However, Israel was doing fine in the 80s after the Lebanon war, when the PLO and all Palis in Lebanon were expelled to Tunis. Everything went fine until President Bush 41 decided to muck up the works, and Bill Clinton followed him. All the blood that Israel has shed since are collectively on the hands of those 2 pretty rotten presidents
gravenimage says
Importan points, Wellington.
abu taleb says
If Malaysia can claim Sabah and Serawak as part of Malaysia even though the natives do not want the occupation then Israel can have the same claim too. Sabah and Serawak natives are not Malays, therefore they are discriminated by Malaysia, a very racist country,
Vlad says
If they annex, it could backfire so badly. Why? Because just like in the west, if the leftists take power in Israel, they’ll give the Palestinians citizenship and voting rights in exchange for votes or forming a voting block with peaceful Islamists. In any case, eventually the Israel left is bound to win an election, and Israel is kind people they could let their guard down and make this Catosrophjc mistake.
But on the other hand, it is very difficult to live with these people surrounding you, it always feels like Israel will run out of luck and the Palestinians could find 2-3 big countries to back them and storm Israel proper. Israel need West Bank for strategic depth.
A hypothetical alliance of Turkey Iran Egypt, it would be too much to handle, the Palestinians would destroy liens of communication in the rearguard.
The world would never allow Israel to kick the Palestinians out…. It ain’t easy being Israel, everyone has turned on them.
STJOHNOFGRAFTON says
From The River To The Sea IDF Makes Judea Hamas Free.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Yep! And Gaza too!
Do what they did in 1983: at that time, they forced the PLO and all “Palestinians” to leave Lebanon and move to Tunisia. They need to do the same now – remove them from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and move them to countries like Somalia, Mauritania or France
ploome says
good luck
gravenimage says
Israel Must Make It Clear That It Has a Right to Retain All of Judea and Samaria
……………………………………..
Of course, Muslims and antisemitc Leftists will never accept Israel having a right to key parts of Israel.